he started thinking about how can i know the marines that are being deployed over into iraq and he was really not but if i could say it this way after embarrassing the french what he thought of the marines that freedom fries would be the proper thing to do well he made several letters and i got thinking well i'm not sure it's such a good idea but then my chief of staff when dale and i went to. what can i do i want to be responsive to constituent but i'm not put a bill and i'm not going to inflame they at the. and then say well why don't you write chairman bob ney who has oversight of the restaurants in the house he said he'll probably do nothing with it well. bob ney scuse me bob ney thinks it is a great idea so we do a press conference and all these crist people from around the world including russia they sent people they are and to take these pictures of native walter jones in freedom for us and because he made sure that all of the fries in the congressional restaurants of cafeterias in the office buildings then say french fries anymore for a period of time they will call freedom for

was unable to attack iraq because the idea was that. that was some movement on had some relationship with saddam hussein which wasn't really true but it was something that could be sold because bin laden was still out there i mean for now that now that we know jamie when you know from from the historical record the people who were there were talking to george bush before even the supreme court appointed this president in two thousand. his plan was to invade iraq you know we've had three members of his cabinet now that write books say i mean the first cabinet meeting that was the first topic you brought up in the nine months before nine eleven i don't care about point does the right say ok you know we're going to just talk about something else let's talk about donald trump's hair or is that why the research i think it's well it's ridiculous all your preamble i said so you're preamble this was about bypassing social security this whole starting wars about you george bush inflating ran around in the seventy's leaving it for you and your id

troops still remain in iraq where america's embassy looms large and control over iraq's oil sector is perceived to be ultimate truth because in this eight year war at the very least in order to deny china or any other perceived intentional rival control of valuable resources the idea. ingrained in the thinking of these new strength. just see washington d.c. we're still very much an hour is that we must control the middle east be closed. experts say the u.s. wants to remain in the region to keep an eye on syria and continue right of the development in syria go to the extent that there is and follow the regime we don't know what kind of regime or maybe that could be brought us really maybe it will be something even worse you cannot withdraw at this juncture you cannot leave the vacuum iran will just take advantage of it but from the perception of american interests meanwhile the perception of america as democracy remains somewhat distorted has it been used as a tool to achieve a geo political gains in financial interests for all washington in the end listen to the voice of the people we

fields in iraq they were again b.s. but those oil fields were being controlled by european companies we wanted control of those companies and i've always believed that one of the primary reasons we invaded iraq was to get control of this oil wealth effect this. we have a full screen graphic i think we can show or maybe we should just show our viewers this graphic of iraq that is came out of your lawsuit that they literally were dividing that here it is right here they literally were dividing the country up and and these blocks down here in the lower end where the big oil chunks are and then a list of the that is titled the headline is foreign suitors for iraqi oil field contracts and this is five march two thousand what this is not is six months eight months whatever it is i can do that if asked in my head after a year before your life for two thousand and eleven i always believed that two thousand was a pretext to invade iraq and unfortunately what's happened is that we see we didn't even get control of the oil fields

you need to know this even though bin laden is dead the wars in afghanistan and iraq continue on rather rapid down draw of troop drawdown of troops in afghanistan in july as many as hopeful or at hope for u.s. officials are now saying that the president will likely only a lot about five of the one hundred thousand soldiers there another five thousand troops may be sent home by the end of the year a small dent in our massive force so our war in afghanistan is likely to continue on with no clear mission at least three twenty. fourteen or about our war in iraq a war with an equally unclear mission for bush left office he pushed through an agreement between the u.s. and iraq promising that all troops would be out of that country by december thirty first of this year so now the pentagon is sending we could be there a little longer secretary defense robert gates and the united states military will stay in iraq past the deadline if the iraqi government requests more help filling holes in their security forces pentagon spokesperson elizabeth robbins said we are willing to entertain a request fo

i am now in my fourth tour in iraq. i took for granted all along until i had a son deployed to iraq, and he is now in afghanistan. just to see what families go through, it makes an incredible difference. you asked how long it takes to train the iraqi troops. i cannot speak for afghanistan, but as far as the iraqis go, giving them the basic knowledge required to fight an insurgency , the blocking and tackling, that can be done in a relatively short amount of time. we started this effort with the new iraqi army in the summer of 2003. i think the more important aspect is the professional ization in both the officer corps and the noncommissioned officer court that takes years to develop the kind of leadership that we think that the iraqi soldiers, basic iraqi soldiers deserve. when they look at our military, what sets us apart from most of the other militaries in the world is the tremendous professionalism of our non- commissioned officer corps. they see what our sergeants do when they're given the freedom to make decisions

of troops from iraq. with the. policy of drawing from afghanistan and by the time of the next election i think david cameron has no stomach for going into the next election with british troops fighting unpopular wars he didn't do his two predecessors any good i think he rightly calculates it won't do him any good and therefore i think that you are beginning to see the rattling of british foreign policy in its alliance with the united states over the afghan and iraq conflicts. and this has been a recurring issue where no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in iraq how should british officials be held accountable for invading on false grounds. yes of course i think it's one of the worst political crimes that you can commit to take your country to war on the basis of lies to say one hundred seventy nine people to that that's. is a gross crime which should be treated in the same way that we would treat any other head of state or any other group of government officials who lost their lives of their own citizens

is who died in the part of iraq where the british had influence the southern provinces including. you know what is the figure it's ranging from what about one hundred ten thousand on your site to other estimates putting that figure maybe closer to a million well a hundred ten thousand is the total documented civilian deaths for the whole of iraq for the whole of this period but if we just take the four provinces where person was supposed to be maintaining security then some three thousand three hundred deaths occurred in the period when they were in charge there to about another one thousand six hundred during the invasion that means over five thousand iraqis died as it were on the british watch in that part of iraq and more significantly about one hundred twenty four of those are known to have been directly killed by british troops some of them in circumstances of jupiter's legality now you've you criticize the john chilcot inquiry for not taking that into account or making more of it yeah. well one of the interesting things is that commentators or whatever political persuasion w

invasion of iraq french fries quickly became freedom fries after france u.s. relations soured despite summit smiles but with the new french president came a new friend circles a has rejected entirely the path of good friends playing a constructive role in a multi multi-polar world and has aligned himself with the single superpower the united states nowadays france is barking much louder with more soldiers involved in foreign military conflicts of brawn then ever before it's a globalist more than colonies and it's not just the friends it's. global plan to change governments as they want. france played a central role in ivory coast's bloody presidential stalemate and is considered the un spoke in the leader of the intervention in libya this great cause he wanted to participate and to be one of the first. ruler western ruler to go there and just for his political agenda critics say this new global policy was meant to win over french food hers but hasn't worked france is kind of small united states with many interventions that are very costly and very little think

major combat operations in iraq have ended in the battle of iraq the united states and around. half prevailed. now as we all know that was not the end of the war in iraq in fact that war is still going on today the u.s. didn't begin pulling forces out of iraq into last fall when they said that major combat operations were finally over but even still we have about fifty thousand troops left there some seven years after bush declared mission accomplished so maybe andrew card keep his mouth shut when it comes to talking about chest pounding and that's why he's tonight's bull's-eye minor. and now we told you many times on this program about the increased use of g.p.s. devices to track and surveil american citizens now there is one environmental activist who stepped forward to wired magazine after she found a g.p.s. which had been placed under her car courtesy of the feds according to wired dot com this method is becoming a very common way for feds to track anyone they deem suspicious or potential threat to our country depending on if you actually consider environmental activists of

i am now in my fourth tour in iraq. i took for granted all along until i had a son deployed to iraq, and he is now in afghanistan. just to see what families go through, it makes an incredible difference. you asked how long it takes to train the iraqi troops. i cannot speak for afghanistan, but as far as the iraqis go, giving them the basic knowledge required to fight an insurgency , the blocking and tackling, that can be done in a relatively short amount of time. we started this effort with the new iraqi army in the summer of 2003. i think the more important aspect is the professional ization in both the officer corps and the noncommissioned officer court that takes years to develop the kind of leadership that we think that the iraqi soldiers, basic iraqi soldiers deserve. when they look at our military, what sets us apart from most of the other militaries in the world is the tremendous professionalism of our non- commissioned officer corps. they see what our sergeants do when they're given the freedom to make decisions

only 47% of iraq an afghanistan veterans are enrolled in the va.average age of our member is 28 years old. i think the va has to realign their entire business model, find these veterans where they are and use social media, facebook and twitter more aggressively than they are right now and advertise their products. most people aren't aware of the gi benefits, they don't know about va home loan opportunities. va has great products and services to offer but they have a really hard time finding them. that's why they need to partner more aggressively with groups like ours and other organizations at the local level to push out their resources and connect with those vets. >> how do you think the va is doing at this point in terms of getting benefits in some reasonable time to those who have signed up? >> horribly. they're atrocious. you've got clerks -- >> we could have said that ten years ago. >> we've said it and we've stood before congressional committees and said we've got to fix it. when they ask for more people we said absolutely let's get more peop

troops still remain in iraq where america's embassy looms large and control over iraq's oil sector is perceived to be holding a copy in this eight year war and to bury its he or she didn't i china or any other perceived intentional rival control all valuable resources that the idea. grained in the thinking of these new york stress. washington d.c. we're still very much in our. role in the middle east. experts say the u.s. going through me in the region to keep an eye on syria and contain iran at the develop in syria go to the extent that there is and follow the regime we don't know what kind of regime or maybe it will be. us three maybe it will be something even worse you cannot withdraw at this juncture you cannot leave the vacuum iran will just take advantage of it but from the perception of american interest meanwhile the perception of america's democracy remains somewhat distorted has it been used as a tool to achieve the geo political games and financial interests who are all washington in the end listening to the voice of the people growing up or not i r.t. new york got a some o

-led invasion of iraq began. moreover, this is not a fixable situation. because of potentially -- because the potential iraq regime ambivalent towards israel exists only in the mines of pro-israel u.s. citizens, these are the men and women who at day's end are israel's most lethal enemies. the cost of unqualified u.s. support for israel long has been measured only in dollars and political capital. and as such, has been largely ignored by americans aline with the washington's radical ways. and we're in the situation where the cost of support for israel is or soon will be measured in the lives of american parents children. that cost, i think, will quickly become obvious, abhorrent and utterly unacceptable to those parents. fourth, finally, and i think most important, the u.s. government and its european allies must stop trying to spread democracy abroad by military, financial, humanitarian or political intervention. no young american man or woman should die for the insane goal of giving the people of iraq and afghanistan of a possibility of embracing democr

the user names are anonymous, and so on. >> smith: in february 2010, manning was back in iraq. and within a month or two, he allegedly loaded special data mining software onto his classified workstation and started downloading more documents, including a quarter- million confidential state department cables. >> confidential information like, what did secretary of defense gates say to his counterpart in paris? what did the ambassador in paris say to secretary gates? but it's confidential. bradley manning, for example, does not need to know what the secretary of defense said to his counterpart in paris. >> smith: by late april, bradley manning's private world was falling apart. when manning saw on facebook that his friend tyler watkins was in a new relationship, he lashed out. "if you don't start answering some goddamn questions," he wrote, "there will be a hell of a scene." >> i really thought he was going to kill himself. i just was waiting for the news that he was going to blow his head off. >> smith: according to an army report, a week after the breakup, manning was found in

in iraq, he led our soldiers against the brutal insurgency. having trained iraqi forces coming in as the nation must ultimately take responsibility for their own security. having served as acting commander of central command, he understands that in iraq and afghanistan, a security gains must go hand in hand. just as he challenged the army to embrace new doctrine in texas, i expect him to push all our forces to continue adapting and be ready for the missions of today and tomorrow. i was proud to nominate marty as chief of staff and he only assume that position last month your tenure as chief may go down as one of the shortest in army history. it is your lifetime of accomplishment that brings us here today and i thank you for your willingness to take on this new assignment along with your wife and her three children, all of whom have served in the army. today, i want everyone of our men and women in uniform to hear the words you spoke to your soldiers on your first day as chief because it is our shared message to all who serve, especially our tr

office and long before nine eleven bush was telling his people to start drawing up plans to invade iraq around the same time a trial was unfolding in new york city against four men who were accused of blowing up the kenyan and tanzanian embassies back in two thousand and eight but the f.b.i. wasn't as interested in the operatives on trial they want of the big fish they want to put osama bin laden himself on trial for the bombings too but in order to do that in order to get a conviction against bin laden the f.b.i. had to prove that the four men in the courtroom along to a vast terrorist network that bin laden was at the top and at that time there was no evidence to support the existence of such an organization in fact those early videos that bin laden released to the media showing his army of armed fighters with a k forty seven s. they were a fabrication the fighters were essentially just actors told to bring their own guns for the shoot according to the b.b.c. and see bin laden was nothing before nine eleven but the f.b.i. needed to turn him into something so this is all pretty a lot o

so as you write it was iraq war all planned out back in one thousand nine hundred nine and osama bin laden do just exactly what president george w. bush so badly needed when he attacked us on nine eleven for more on this i'm joined by ross baker editor of who what why dot com and author of the book family of secrets the bush dynasty rush russ welcome thank you. for first of all first question cindy sheehan's quote i believe that you were the guy who talked to mickey herskowitz and had that information was that accurate her her testimony before congress. yes in fact they asked me to come to washington when they were having some informal hearings to talk about my reporting i document this in great detail in my book family of secrets basically in two thousand and four when i was working on the book i was able to meet with mickey herskowitz a well known and well respected texas journalist who had been george w. bush's writing partner on a book project when bush was running for president mickey had never before spoken to a member of the press of what transpired back then he did speak with

daniel is buried there, babylon, abraham is from iraq, esther is from iraq. now iraq christians gunned down. >> it would require religious training for all foreign officers, strengthen the countries for nations that deny religious freedom and elevate the religious freedom ambassador so they report directly to the secretary of state. [music playing]. new york city city pastor dr. suzan johnson cook has been tapped by president obama for the position and walking on to a volatile world stage. >> in pakistan, they gunned down the only christian member of the cabinent, shavez bhatti. you have a christian woman in pakistan, in jail for blasphemy. yet we are shovelling the money into pakistan. >> dr. suzan johnson cook will identify countries that persecute people of faith and subject to u.s. sanctions. congressman wolf says religious freedom is a major issue. >> they are generally a democratic country that you are not at war with. you are not arguing with, not fighting with. >> looking ahead to 2012, congressman wolf intends to write a let ter to every candidate ma

achieved and was it worth iraq might have become the country that u.k. wanted to see what is a country that iraqi people want to live in constant violence and stable government poverty and unemployment people suffering from the rise diseases caused by the use of depleted uranium in the border us together with there was draw from iraq u.k. has decided to decrease its mission in afghanistan by four hundred soldiers they will be coming home through the course of this year but there are thousands of others around the world as british m.p. paul fleeing rightly put it in the chambres last week the government should ask themselves who will be the last soldier they will order to die for a mistake. way to national news we're covering for you today suicide attacks have stormed the government building your gun it's north east of the capital kabul and they say there are at least three men armed with machine guns holed up in the traffic police headquarters at least three people reported killed afghan forces are surrounded the building and want the launching of from a

why we were losing iraq. and they reached back and they found these sort of intellectual antecedents french counterinsurgency theory and the rule and the missions and how to sort of refashion government to get at this problem and they played an interesting rule and advocacy and they've become in some ways as described by other reporters a farm team to the obama foreign policy. >> what is your dÉjÀ? >> i work for "the wall street journal" covering national security. >> finally, nathan, what is the image on the front of your book? the young boy on the wraparound, and the soldier, where did you get this image? >> i think the image conveys a little bit of sort of how i felt about this mission as i observed it which is kind of like at times the ronald reagan saying i'm from the government, here to help. yes, our military is there. they are there to help to do fundamentally humanitarian things come and that is a mission that they have embraced. it's a rewarding mission but also has unintended consequences. so i wan

troops there have been two signatures wounds of the iraq and afghanistan war. the first is traumatic brain injury caused by explosions. the second is injury to the extremities, the arms and legs. the torso being protected by body armor. the head protected as much as it can be with a helmet. the extremities exposed to the possibility of small arms fire, but more often to the force of what is most likely in both wars an improvised explosive device. for the first two years the typical u.s. vehicle to transport u.s. troops in theater is a humvee. a light, thin-skinned vehicles unsuited to protecting its occupants from improvised explosive devices. it got better but it took years. it got better in 2006 when they ramped up the replacement of humvees in theater with a new vehicle invented by force of necessity. by force of what was killing and mailing u.s. troops. it was the mine resistant ambush protected vehicle, the m-wrap, unlike the humvee an m-wrap has a v-shaped hole. there are a number of different types of m-raps now. i got to tour a whole yard of them in sou

as mr wilkerson and jeremy both said i mean the decision to go into iraq is the single most important factor why we have waited this long to get osama bin laden beginning in two thousand and two a massive diversion of resources and attention was taken from afghanistan to iraq that allowed the insurgency that allowed to escape from tora bora allow the insurgency to regroup and kind of regenerate itself in afghanistan and that's why we're still there so i think president obama certainly does he deserves a lot of credit for refocusing america's national security policies on pressuring al qaida and generating the information which finally led to locating and killing a lot if you want to say we kind of jumped right into the bush stuff in the more heated discussion but let me just say i think all praise for president obama for the national security team he has for armed forces this is to me not a parson issue at all there's a discussion that's obviously going to follow but today and last night no i it wasn't about politics it was about parties i was just excited that we had killed osama bin

i know why dib cheney went to iraq. >> wow.t it didn't have to do with al qaeda or bin laden. it had to do with the oil. >> that was the camouflage. that was to get the american people excited about going to war in iraq again. the real reason for iraq, and incidentally the reason we aren't coming home anytime soon is the oil. >> you know, you mentioned dick cheney as if he was making the decisions. i want to play one more clip from george bush in that same interview and get a response from you. let's watch first. >> can you name the president of chechnya. >> no, can you? >> the president of taiwan? >> yeah, lee, theual pakistani general took over office, he appears he's going to bring stability to the country, and i think that's good news. >> but you can't name him? >> general. i can't name the general. >> and prime minister of india? >> the new prime minister of india is -- no. >> now, at the time, i remember some people said, well, that was unfair, you can't ask somebody running for president to know world leaders, but his pr

going into iraq that iraq had weapons of mass destruction or kinds of even receipts and boyce's tales testimony were provided satellite images it was all a fraud so the idea that we are protecting people in the u.s. by terrorizing people around the world this is the great crime and the lie you get you going to the earlier you also mentioned that you can indeed end up in provocation and we have in the got a report a little earlier saying that there are those who saying that the tension such as only the it holds interrogation current lead to prefer the recruitment i'll cut it was exactly what is the argument how does that work. the u.s. wars around the world are in danger in people right here along with the very countries that they are destroying and it's not just in guantanamo there are secret u.s. prisons from abu ghraib two sites what they call black sites unknown and unlisted sites all around the world and none of them are about providing security for the people here they're really about abiding security for u.s. corporations to go anywhere and rewrite the rules of the game and this

joined the american invasion of iraq in two thousand and three supposedly to destroy saddam hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be nonexistent opposition to the rule of the outside groups significantly in britain as a result one hundred seventy nine british military personnel died in the conflict and was draw of most of u.k. forces got under way almost two years ago critics say british involvement failed to make iraq a safer place with terror attacks still a regular occurrence chancellor bodo of the iraq body count research project says the u.k. has tended to ignore the casualties are they swarm. commentators or whatever political persuasion were for or against this conflict are kind of united in something even casual treatment of iraq the cost of this and we believe that this will not be laid to rest properly until there is a fall and be told inquiry into iraq you don't sort of been caused whatever benefits may have accrued to some people in iraq and these are highly contested people who died absolutely the ultimate losers of this conflict we should know

authorities in one tunnel and other prisons overseas like the infamous abu ghraib in iraq contributed to more terror when i was in iraq i oversaw the interrogations of foreign fighters and those foreign fighters the majority of them said time and time again the reason they come to iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse detainees and both are great and when tom obey and this is not my opinion the department offense tracked the statistics and they were briefed every interrogator right there that said that torture and abuse was okayed is number one recruiting tool and so this policy of torture and. use did not make america safer what it did was it caused the deaths of hundreds or thousands of american soldiers recently in the wake of all the cheering about bin laden's death when asked about torture the cia director said other we would have gotten the same information through other approaches so i think it's always going to be an open question just a few years ago when i grew up obama was running for president on promises that downed one on a mole on top but. it was presented

when they look at the news and they see what journalists call the bang bang from places like iraq and asking if tnn show them another picture of what goes on, sort of the three cups of tea cited the war. that is what the military calls an academic side of things. what i really wanted to get out was the very people who are really getting their hands dirty doing these kinds of things, rebuilding schools, digging wells, building roads, fundamentally nonmilitary situations in iraq and afghanistan. >> is the u.s. military building schools, building roads to nonmilitary functions? >> you use a price to see the extent to which they've embraced that especially in places like afghanistan, where doing these nationbuilding mission is a cornerstone of the exit strategy, creating a local government is capable of delivering things like criminal justice. the big concern is the taliban could now covered the coalition so that's really where civilians who have nonmilitary expertise baby step in. >> her determination to make a mint? >> nationbuilding is one of those terms that is kind of woolly. and sor

casualties spite in iraq. today, iraq is not so much the problem, but after so many years when afghanistan did not have any i.e.d's, they are now the major killer of troops in afghanistan. around half of americans killed or injured are victims of i.e.d's/ the there are 1300 i.e.d's discovered every month. that does not count the ones no one sees. tens of thousands of every year. some are very hard to detect. killing hundreds of american troops per year. there would be many more if we were not spending billions of dollars on these trucks. but as it stands, even the survivors suffer long-term consequences, besides the trauma injuries. and brain injuries are huge problem now. i read something like 25,000 american troops have been concussed and suffered brain injuries in afghanistan, and most of those are since the i.e.d. scourge picked up over the last three years. they are the major reason why the coalition cannot fully control even provinces close to kabul where they have the most troops. extreme difficulty cau

they're all military widow who's lost their loved ones in iraq and afghanistan. terron davis was just 21 when she lost her soul mate michael in iraq a month after he surprised her at home. >> we had two weeks of r & r and they were perfect. on april 9th, he had to go back. so i took him to the airport trying not to cry because i promised him i wouldn't. finally he said i have to go, baby. he looked down at me. he said why do we fit so good together? i always said because we were made for each other. >> reporter: a month later, she received that dreaded knock on the door. her husband was killed by a roadside bomb. >> the last thing i said to him was i love you more than life itself. >> reporter: living without michael is an every day